What Are you So Scared Of?
by mychemicalbitchbot
Summary: After all, Alec, they're only words. All you can lose is everything.


**I just found this. I think I wrote it at 2 am about 3 months ago... thought I'd type it up, though I'm always writing this type of this. Sorry if it's a bit repetitive.**

Alec rests his cheek on his hands as he leans down on his old oak desk in his room in the institute, finishing the last of his notes, the little bit of space that he knows won't be his much longer. He looks at the cork board he had started using shortly after Isabelle suggested he get one.

There are pictures of Jace and Isabelle, many photos where he looks half dead and some where he looks half alive. There is a subtle difference, a sparkle in his eye that drives away the fear he was always reminded of in a moment of silence, a petty weakness that his mind always fell ill to thinking about. A fear that's still lurking in the corners of his head, just waiting to strike with a vengeance. It's just a fear that his siblings don't really seem to possess, a terror of breaking the cracked shell he worked so hard to construct.

The brown board has some photos of people he might know, but only a few, scattered across the space like the ones sitting on his desk. There had always been something keeping him from tacking up more photos, a feeling he'd been drowning in since Jace began living at the institute.

_Fear._

Alec had never really been around very many people his own age. He sort of had his sister, two years his junior, and always attached to their mother at the hip. Then Jace came, and needed someone who could be _anything_ to him. An unjudging wall, a brother, a friend. Alec agreed to the terms and conditions, and he began to love being nothing and everything to his new little adopted brother. All of this, while he began to question the way he viewed the world,the way he started to question and _stare _at the people around him, transfixed. He began to wonder, and understand, exactly why people wanted him to the things he's readily learned to hate into a box and do his best to seal it, labeling it 'toxic' with a drawing of a skull. He'd tried so hard.

But there was another person in those photos where he seemed half alive, always at least half alive, sometimes even more. That person seemed to have plans for the box he'd sprung out of as he slammed it against affection and encouraging words. A crack in the heavy wood and an unfixable damage to the already faulty lock allowed a piece of Alec's unforgiving heart to fly out like a demon from not his, but Pandora's, box. It brought with it trust and other destructive, not to mention unwanted, things. But not everything got out before he resealed the stupid, faulty thing, to keep it safe from himself and warlocks who will only serve to destroy him.

Alec had happily trapped what was left of his heart, his trust and the withered remains of his capacity for love. But looking over photographs he realizes yet another flaw of his stupidly shut box. The lid is down, the lock as secure as it can be, but he still can't keep those unnecessary and utterly _useless _feelings of his under control. It probably showed to everyone, how needy he was. Much like what he imagines Pandora felt, he regrets ever going for the box that everything bad was piled up in. He can never go bad, and he doubts the gods will flood the earth to rid him of mankind is even an option in this world of demons he's lived so long in.

Alec's hand goes to his phone as he sighs lightly, deciding on his course of action. He looks to the smiling eyes of his partners in the pictures as he fiddles with his cellular device before finally typing in the numbers and reaching a decision about how he's going to go about doing this. His first call to the man he's fallen fuckily in love with since he realized just how bloody smashed his box was when he became alone, deserted, again.

The digits are soft on his fingers but hard on his mind, and he pulls his battered phone to his ear, leaning off the back of his hand to tilt his head towards the device, sticking it between his head and shoulder, his hand still sandwiched in. It's the extra support he needs to o this. He has to do this, and the nerves he's drowned in alcohol and other less desirable things aren't going to stop him. He can't feel them anymore, so they're not there. Dead to him, they are.

A quirky speech that used to make him chuckle and blush, then it's to voice mail. He figured he'd be ignored, anyway. A small smile graces his lips, he's glad that Magnus has let his plans not turn askew, this is just how he wanted it to be. No talking back, just Alec.

_Mags, y'know who this is. Wouldn't have ignored it otherwise._ A grunt. _I wanted t'tell you that I kinda wish I'd never met you. I don't hate you; not one bit. But that's just the problem. You get it, don't ya? I've fallen in love with ya, for better or worse. Worse, I think. I shouldn't be calling, I know that. This isn't even 'bout you. You're just the center of it. I ne'er wanted to fall in love. Just 'nother stupid thing 'bout me. Now that I've fallen in love, I think I was-_

There's a beep, signalling the end of the message by default. Alec sighs again, scooping up all the pictures from his worn desk and throwing them across his bed. He makes sure that every tack is sorted out, pin side up as he uses their usual container to hold ink as he destroys his pens, pouring black and blue ink into the little leaking plastic box, his hands stained with an unnatural color that doesn't belong.

His eyes might be a bit glassy and he might have had six drinks too many, but he can at least do this right. Finally, after all the pens are drained, he dips his fingers in the ink and begins to write. He figures he might as well make a spectacle out of himself, though less than the one that would follow anyway, for once. He wrote with all the ink he could find, all the desperate hope and betrayal he could scrounge up. He draws a rune over the entire thing, and he hopes it'll work. His words across the unforgiving cream wall of this bedroom will never leave.

He crawls into the bed, puling up the covers and staining them without a care. The institute is old; it has never had the best heating, not that he can feel the cold with all the liquor running through his veins. But it'll be best if he's this way when he falls asleep.

He smiles at the thought of tomorrow. He's not going to be on the stand for killing a child vampire in cold blood. He's not going to have to see the disappointed faces of his family and _their _friends. He won't have to deal with Pandora or her box. No shit from the Clave, from the useless and _judging _shadowhunter families of old blood about his life choices. Tomorrow is the biggest day of all for him.

* * *

An annoyed shadowhunter knocks on the oldest Lightwood son's door, pissed that the day isn't already done and over with. After yet another minute of no response, he unlocks the door and pushes it open to the man's lightless room. He flips the plain white switch and the consuming dimness is replaced by a grudging and unhappy light.

_He's still sleeping,_ the shadowhunter notes. He moves to the wrinkled and oddly patterned bed that radiates no warmth, and shakes the dark-haired man it encompasses. He tries calling, but the body doesn't move. No reaction again, and the shadowhunter looks worriedly around the room, his eyes passing over little orange plastic bottles and larger, clearer glass ones with brown labels, before his gaze rests back on the scene, the words written in an awful and dried up scrawl in an odd color ink.

He fights the urge to puke as he sees it, the last remnant of the man, boy really, he now knows to be dead.


End file.
